Posts tagged hartlepoole united

Seeing as Mildred has been preventing me posting this any earlier by doing pretty much exactly what she is doing in that picture – i.e. sitting in my lap and DEMANDING attention – I figured I might as well start off with a cute cat picture. This is the internet after all.

Anyhow, welcome to the Friday Fives, where I fire in links to five things which have caught my eye this week, and you either slag me off for being shallow, infantile and easily impressed or chip in with your own interesting stuff in the comments section.

It’s a really exceptional lineup at Henry’s tomorrow. The Black Tambourines were so good when they played here just before Christmas 2011 that we tried to sign them. Their music is basically a very surfy, lo-fi guitar pop but it’s played with such reckless abandon that you can’t help but get carried away with it. Their Toad Session is great too – that’s the main video above, and the whole thing can be found here.

North American War are another one of my favourite ‘Scottish bands no-one seems to have heard of’. It’s a shame really, because they are more accomplished and fiercer live than most bands we’ve seen at the Toad gigs. These two will be joined by the excellent Honeyblood, who I’ve been trying to put on for ages, and who have exciting plans in the pipeline apparently, I’ve just not yet managed to weasel out of them what they are!

The gig is at 7pm, and you’ll pay a fiver on the door, which includes free entry to the club night afterwards, because Henry’s are that nice!

I am a bad flyer at the best of times, and this Guardian gallery of the world’s scariest airports is quite literally the stuff of my nightmares. There are at least two or three of those airports I have had horrendous dreams about, without knowing that they genuinely existed somewhere in the world, including the one above, where there basically is no fucking airport!

Well it kinda had to be this one, didn’t it! As you’ve probably gathered by now, we are releasing a couple of singles by our good friends Sparrow and the Workshop in the run up to their third album, which will be out later this year. I’ve wanted to work with these guys from the day they recorded one of the first ever Toad Sessions back in 2008, and after constant, undignified pleading and hanging around outside their flat all hours of the day and night, it seems they have come to their senses at last!

Purists hate coloured vinyl because apparently it doesn’t sound as good. Personally, I don’t have a particularly cultured ear, and so I fucking love it. It looks amazing! Come on, you joyless fuds and gaze upon the multicoloured swirls and sparkles! The gallery linked above is from Official FM Vinyl, who make short runs of 50-100 records, which is something we might well look into doing next year if we can, so the fanatics can have vinyl while the rest of the world wants CDs. And, as a bonus link, here is a bit of a rant against the vinyl revival, just as a couterbalance.